At a gathering of sages, Rabban Gamliel — the head of the academy, the Nasi of the generation, the most politically powerful rabbinic figure of his age — picked up a pitcher and began personally serving Rabbi Yehoshua water.
Rabbi Yehoshua did not protest. The other rabbis were stunned. Here was the head of the Sanhedrin, waiting on one of his colleagues like a servant. Someone finally asked him why he allowed it.
Rabbi Yehoshua answered with two verses. "Abraham waited on the travelers at Mamre" — the three strangers who came in the heat of the day, whom Abraham personally fed and served with his own hands (Genesis 18:2–8). "And the Holy One Himself waits on every human being every day — for He is the One who provides every man with his food." He gives food to all flesh, for His mercy endures forever (Psalms 136:25).
If the father of the Jewish people served strangers and the Holy One serves all flesh, Rabbi Yehoshua was saying, then it is no dishonor for Gamliel to serve a sage. The one who pours the water is not the lesser person in the room. He is the one closest to the pattern of God.
The exchange, preserved as exemplum no. 199 in Moses Gaster's 1924 The Exempla of the Rabbis, appears in fuller form in the Talmud (Kiddushin 32b) in an argument about whether rabbinic scholars may renounce the honor due to them. Rabbi Yehoshua's answer reframed the whole question. Service was not a demotion. It was the divine default. Gamliel pouring water for a colleague was simply doing what God does for everyone every day, one cup at a time.